>Francois-Andre Danican Philidor (1726-1795) is widely regarded as the strongest chess player ever in history prior to the modern era. He was so much better than any of his contemporaries that it is impossible for us to know how good he really was. The edition of the book that is reprinted here was published in 1871 by C. Sanson. This shows that the original Philidor book was still the standard work on the subject one hundred years after it was first written.